Saxon: heavy metal thunder

Saxon have learned nothing, from 30 years in heavy metal. I loved them at 13, grew wary at 14 and ran away at 15, they are still exactly where they were when I was 12. It's almost admirable how everyone in the band, from near 60 year old, original members to young guns who joined later shows the same utter lack of imagination and self awareness. You begin to suspect that they have long been secretly controlled by someone who gave all prospective members an IQ test and threw out anyone who had anything over 60.

And, their ex-manager is the same, and their ex members, and their fans and then  Lemmy rolls up with tales of how Saxon drank tea while he injected live rats into his eyeballs or something, and here’s Lars Ulrich telling stories whose point you are still waiting for ten minutes after he’s done. Until finally it sinks in; the vast and obvious truth you have evaded for so long: the world of metal was a world of cretins, even the stuff you still like was made by morons. Sabbath are ace, but Ozzy is the Sultan of Tardistan, all of Metallica with their therapists and their onscreen betrayal of the wounded and dim-witted Mustaine are so dumb that they don’t realize that showing themselves being themselves is about as wise as invading Russia in November using Ostriches as transport.

And the whole lot of em are filled with pride at the idea that Spinal Tap may have been based on them: “See that film, that one about a bunch of moronic, self-obsessed morally bankrupt cretins: that’s us that is!”

Sometimes they are fundamentally decent people, some of Saxon, some of Judas Priest, but they are morons to a man. If they were not they would have quit playing metal.

 The people who make films and write about metal are generally 1 level up from this troglodyte morass. Geoff Barton, allegedly a music critic, writing on Saxon's cretinous duh fest, 6th form girls, says: "I mean....in the hands of...of...a...lesser metal act....a song like that could be construed as being rather...crude" This is as opposed to this nuanced and delicate exploration of young womanhood apparently”

Sixth form girls, they're looking good

Skin tight jeans, they're out for fun

They drink wine late at night

Meet some man who'll make them laugh

Buy them drinks and make a pass

Take them back to a penthouse flat

Sixth form girls take their pick of men

They're learning fast the ways of love

Just sixteen, teenage dream

Sixth form can't get out at night

They keep them in, it's an awful sin

Should set them free and let them roam

Morons: the lot of em.

The point was that guitar sound, that’s all it ever was. Take that and give it to Cobain, or Korn or Faith No More and you have a chance, but leave it with the metal men and you are in for high volume cretinism, nothing more.

I’m sorry, but there it is.